1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to an apparatus and method using speech understanding for automating the channel selection process in interactive television. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a system which utilizes natural language processing for receiving a spoken channel selection request and processing the request against information extracted from an electronic programming guide for automatically selecting a channel.
2. Discussion
The design of interactive television allows two-way communication. Unlike conventional one-way television (TV) or radio broadcasts, most interactive TV enables viewers to respond by telephone. Interactive TV helps people understand complex programs and absorb large amounts of information quickly. Digital television is a new, more efficient method of television transmission which can broadcast several television channels into the space currently used to carry a single analog channel. This will create opportunities for many more new channels and program services.
In the future, it is expected that all television services will be transmitted digitally. By using digital technology, approximately 200 channels, perhaps more, will be made available. Digital transmission also has the potential to offer other advantages to the viewer, such as high definition or wide-screen pictures, CD-quality sound, and near "video-on-demand," where a film is shown with different start times on several different channels so that the viewer can choose a convenient time to start watching. Interactive services such as home banking, home shopping and connection to the internet could also be made available digitally through the television set.
Viewers who choose to receive digital television by any of these methods will likely need to either buy or rent a special digital receiver or set-top box decoder which will enable digital television pictures to be reassembled on screen. Television sets will also be available with this decoder built in. The set-top box will include a processor that can be used to provide additional services such as speech recognition and speech understanding.
As the number of television channels increase, the viewer will have more and more difficulty making a channel selection. Instead of finding the desired channel by browsing through the entire listing of channels, channel selection can be made by understanding the semantic content of what the viewer wants to see through analyzing the content of the spoken request. By using natural language and dialogue, the viewer would be able to select the desired program and television channel using spoken requests.
In view of the above, it is desirable to create a knowledge representation of electronic program guide (EPG) information which is broadcasted as one of many television signals, and store this information in the TV or in the set-top box. It is also desirable to provide a system which can extract the semantics of the user's spoken program selection request, and apply this request against the EPG knowledge database for searching for the desired program and switching the television to the corresponding channel. Finally, it is desirable to provide a system for interacting with the user by employing a dialogue phase for clarifying the user request or resolving ambiguities.